Abigail Sunderland’s Dream: Her Dad’s?

Laurence Sunderland on the Joy Behar Show

Abigail Sunderland, 16, had her dream to sail around the world alone end on June 14, 2010, when she was rescued from the turbulent waters of the southern Indian Ocean. Her communications were knocked out when the mast of her sailboat was smashed by a large wave. A massive international effort was organized and after 20 hours, Abby was finally saved by a French fishing boat. She was 2,000 miles west of Perth, Australia, where she set off her emergency beacons.

Read moreAbby, seemingly oblivious to the massive international effort to find her, says she will attempt to complete the around the world sail again. Last year, Abby’s brother Zac, who was 17 years old, held the unofficial title of completing the sail. However, in May, Jessica Watson, 16, completed the around the world sail and became the unofficial record holder.

Abby’s failure brought about intense criticism of Abby’s dad, Laurence Sunderland, amidst reports of a proposed reality show deal with a filmmaker named Ted Calorosa. The reality show, according to Ted, was to center around Abby’s voyage.

Sunderland admits that a deal was in the works, however, the deal dissolved with claims by Calorosa that Sunderland was pushing his daughter to sail in spite of a poorly outfitted boat, and he further claims that Sunderland was pushing Abby to please the sponsors of the reality show.

Sunderland countered that Calorosa has a personal vendetta against him. He claims that Calorosa backed out of the deal because he wasn’t going make enough money with it.

Sunderland says that he wanted to make an inspirational show based on Abby and Zac. He claims that Calorosa wanted to take the show in an unethical direction painting him as an irresponsible parent, who was inept at sailing.

Eyes for Lies was asked to analyze some videos for Celebitchy. After she watched Calorosa, she realized that “the person who started this whole reality push was not Sunderland, ironically, according to Calorosa himself, so how can Calorosa be claiming this is the only reason Sunderland was pushing his daughter to sail around the world? That makes no sense. I mean if Sunderland was going to push his daughter to be famous on reality TV show, you’d think he would look for someone more talented than a photography director and go after the TV industry himself. It doesn’t make sense,” says Eyes.

Calorosa says to Joy Behar, “While back in November of 2009, we started developing the show. Ah, I contacted Laurence Sunderland, my brother worked on the Zac’s campaign, her brother’s campaign and I asked him if he would be interested and just to give ya….just so everyone’s clear, I’m not a realty producer. I’m a director of photography. This is the first unscripted thing I have ever done. So I contacted Laurence and I said would you be interested in this, and I pitched it to some of my friends. I pitched it to a friend of mine at Reveille Productions, and he, they went on to sell it to a network, and I basically just started shooting footage.”

You can watch Laurence Sunderland on Larry King Live here.

Eyes for Lies said, “Frankly, I suspect they had a falling apart and neither one of them is being completely honest with us. There is more to this story than either one of them is saying–at least on TV.”
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Karon has offered to help Eyes cover news stories! Many thanks to Karon for helping out!